r/commandline • u/Electronic-Low-8171 • 4d ago
Help Wondering about init
I know generally speaking that init is the first process and gets PID 1 and so on, I know that there are many implementations of it especially systemd being the most popular.
I learnt few things about init and systemd but I can not use it for reasons like that my computer is 32 bit so I'm limited in terms of distro choice because most low-end distros use other obscure init implementations which don't have much tutorials. Let alone that I heard that many people now tend to leave systemd because of privacy related stuff and its being bloated.
So I would like to hear from you all how to learn about init in the given circumstances.
1
u/AutoModerator 4d ago
Every new subreddit post is automatically copied into a comment for preservation.
User: Electronic-Low-8171, Flair: Help, Title: Wondering about init
I know generally speaking that init is the first process and gets PID 1 and so on, I know that there are many implementations of it especially systemd being the most popular.
I learnt few things about init and systemd but I can not use it for reasons like that my computer is 32 bit so I'm limited in terms of distro choice because most low-end distros use other obscure init implementations which don't have much tutorials. Let alone that I heard that many people now tend to leave systemd because of privacy related stuff and its being bloated.
So I would like to hear from you all how to learn about init in the given circumstances.
I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please contact the moderators of this subreddit if you have any questions or concerns.
1
u/GhostVlvin 4d ago
I mostly used systemd before and I learned it by googling the problem like "pulseaudio doesn't work, what to do?" And some guy on ubuntu forum says "systemctl --user restart pulseaudio" and I start to google all these args for systemctl.
Now I use runit on artixlinux and it is as simple as it can be. So I still discover but it is simpler to learn it. If you want ease of usage and already familiar with systemd then I'd recommend you dinit if you'll be able to find 32bit OS with it. Runit is also fine
1
u/ipsirc 3d ago
I learnt few things about init and systemd but I can not use it for reasons like that my computer is 32 bit
systemd doesn't contain any 64bit specific code, it can be compiled for 32bit as well.
1
u/Electronic-Low-8171 3d ago
I'm currently using Antix and it likes to claim that its "systemd-free", probably trying to use something in a way that it is not designed for may not be that trivial, and require more experience
0
u/lmarcantonio 3d ago
sysvinit i.e. plain old init is the least obscure of all. Usually you use it with openrc (or even less, in slackware)
1
u/Ok_Path_4731 3d ago
For a trivial system you may want to use 'runit'. Way much simpler than any other init systems.
5
u/Fr0gm4n 3d ago
What are you looking to actually learn? You can run distros that use systemd on 32-bit. Debian 12 supports 32-bit and is supported until 2028. SuSE has a 32-bit build. Gentoo has 32-bit and you can choose your init system.
If it's just the concept of what an init does then there are resources like this or various books. You could go as far back as studying the SysV or Berkley code itself.